Golden Feather Series
ANOTHER CHARRED SOAPBOX

I'm bringing this section back to the website now that Bush is out of office. I could tell I was being monitored and quickly removed this section. I didn't want to end up imprisoned, a victim of the disgusting Bush Administration.

What is wrong with us that we allowed those Bushie demons to rule for so long? And we still let them reek havoc. The Republicans have been acting inane since Obama was elected. Have we assimilated their fear tactics, their lies, and their bigotry and greed for power that we find nothing wrong with what they did for eight years and are still doing? Yikes! God help us!

Feel free to use any of my comments in this section in any way you want, as long as you don't change my text. However, I ask you to always put my name at the bottom. I don't want any of you beaten or killed for something I've said.

Most of my comments are about republicans, the religious right and conservative christians...or whatever they choose to call themselves. (I choose to not give them capital letters since they don't deserve it by their deeds.) No one challenges these people. With limited knowledge, I intend to. They need it.

These comments are only edited by me. I don't want anyone else connected to them. If I commit a huge grammatical error, so what? I just hope to get my point across.

I don't care if you disagree with anything I say. These are my thoughts alone. Post your own thoughts on your own blog or website. I won't respond a second time to e-mails from right-wing fanatics, kindergarten gangsters in either political party or pharisees who stand before the altar of God and expound on how "born again" they think they are.

The conservative christians are most distressing to me, and I'm sure to you also. I worry about them. How can they claim that Jesus is their Savior, but can only misquote Paul, Genesis and Leviticus to their own hateful ends? I feel they are "Taking the Name of the Lord thy God in vain" by saying their hatred and bigotry beliefs are from God. I don't think Jesus would put up with that.

Because of these hateful, biased "christians," we gays have done damage to our relationship with God and also to ourselves and to our families and friends. Some of us have even given up on God for years (myself included) because of how these religious frauds condemn us gays. Some of us gays have even committed suicide since we've believed that the conservative christians' blasphemy is truth.

I find it blasphemous for anyone to try and force any human being to think of him/herself as being anything other than God's very favorite. I also find it blasphemous for anyone to claim to be "more saved" than anyone else. That same prideful belief condemns them.

It's time for these "christian" people to see what damage they're doing to themselves and to us "in the name of their Lord," whoever that is. Satan can also misquote scripture, and he covets the word "Lord."

You can believe what you want, but allow me tell you what I hear.

You'd better get out your fire extinguisher.

Dave Brown

ANOTHER CHARRED SOAPBOX

If Jesus visited Dobson's Focus on the Family stronghold in Colorado Springs, what would he do?

"Hey!" yelled a FOF staffer. "Why is Jesus tossing armloads of our leaflets into our ever-burning fireplace?"

Some of the staff whispered that it must be the shocking colors of the pamphlets that offended Jesus, him being so used to his drab lifestyle. It couldn't be the contents of the leaflets. The Lord loved their pamphlets, all entitled something like:

Homosexuals: God's Worst Nightmare!
Homosexuals CAN BE CHANGED in the Name of the Lord
THE LORD'S POWER through MONEY and POLITICS
BUSH! THE SAVIOR OF AMERICA!
ACHIEVING ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE TO PAUL'S TEACHINGS
God's PUNISHMENT FOR GAYS, as stated in Leviticus and Paul.

Looking on with smirks, the Focus on the Family staff bet each other that it was either Jesus' burning the leaflets or his loud comment, "Gays are filled with the lamp-oil of love!" that caused him to be shoved out the back door in handcuffs.

It's obvious to many of us that the religious right are deluding themselves. We can see it. Why can't they?

We all know Jesus taught that we must love one another. Jesus mostly hung around social outcasts and sinners; people who understood love. People like us gays. I'm sure many gays and lesbians scooted closer to Jesus' feet when he spoke to the multitudes. They understood what he was saying.

But, what is love?

To sit day after day next to a hospital bed where a lover or friend is ill or dying is inherent gay thinking; love of the highest order.

You want more about love? Buy a Red Letter New Testament and read the red words of Jesus. I'm sure the Red Letter version, translated from Greek and Hebrew, is closer to what Jesus actually said than the "political right" way the current translations of the New Testament (and the Bible) pontificate, now.

Unfortunately, the religious right can't seem to grasp the love concept. They seem steeped in the idea that to get to heaven, one must condemn the "infidels."

Yikes! What does THAT remind you of?

Do religious right believers also dream of naked dancing girls in heaven? Tisk! Tisk! They're breaking their own rules. What evangelist was it that got caught in a motel with a woman? Didn't he cry on TV because his real lifestyle was found out? It was typical republican-conservative-christian bullshit.

And what about former pastor Ted Haggard, the "not yet admitted," bisexual? There's hope for Haggard yet. He's beginning to understand reality.

The religious right people don't fool me with their "born again" crap. What does "born again" mean? By being "born again," are they now able to play God and condemn anyone not like them? Does being "born again" allow them to torture, wire-tap, scam, pay low wages, get rid of employees so they can still live in luxury, divorce and remarry countless times, and on and on, all in the Name of their Lord?

What would Jesus really say about what these people are doing? I think Jesus, right now, is grabbing the same whips he used to cleanse the Temple.

One of the Ten Commandments states: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." Does that mean cussing like everyone says? Hardly. I'm convinced it means committing our acts of hatred, bigotry, thievery and persecution of any person "in the Name of the Lord."

Have any of you read the book, The Man Jesus Loved, by Theodore Jennings Jr.? I recommend it to every gay man. Jennings, married-to-a-woman, does not say that Jesus was ever gay, but hints at it. By using only the first Four Books of the New Testament, Jennings has proven to me that Jesus deeply loved a particular man. We all assume that man is John, but after reading Jennings' book, I'm not so sure. The Man Jesus Loved is worth careful and periodic evaluation. I find it a masterpiece of scriptural understanding.

Jennings' wife keeps her bags packed for fear of backlash from the religious right. However, the websites I've found with hostile responses to Jennings' book are lackluster at best. These attackers use the same worn-out biblical clichès to try and make Jennings feel as guilty as they should feel about their own lives.

I feel sorry for the conservative-christian-religious-right bunch at their "rapture." (Rapture is supposedly the time when all true Christians disappear into thin air and are taken to heaven.)

The ccrr bunch most likely will be the ones left behind because they don't have any inkling of what true love is all about. In other words, their lamps don't seem to contain the "oil of love" to celebrate the Bridegroom's sudden appearance.

Won't they be shocked when they discover that most of us gays and lesbians disappeared and they didn't?

"...there will be gnashing of teeth..." (The Red Words of Jesus)

Jesus wasn't talking about us gays here. We gays and lesbians wouldn't gnash our teeth if we were left behind at their "rapture." We've been brainwashed by the "religious" to expect it. But the religious right will "gnash their teeth" when they find out they were the ones left behind because they didn't think they needed to load their lamps with the oil of love. Some might discover that their "born again-ness" was a fraud. Others will curse God.

To be continued.